Yesterday, I eagerly rushed home with three freshly minted mandrake 8.2 CDs. From what I'd read this is a 'stability' release. Not so many new features - but they all work. Besides that, I wanted to try the new linux kernel and virtual memory manager, the updated supermount (for my wife), avoid any '.so hell' (libpng version 3 vs version 2) and finally I wanted to fix the zlib and openssh security issues.

I always have like Mandrake in the past for their windows integration, centralized menu system and 'leading edge' versions of open source apps and have been known to give money via their website.

 Background

I have been using linux for about 8 years (all major distros) - but have only heavily gotten into it in the past year or two. My home machine is "yesterdays" dream machine. An Athlon 1.33, with 512K RAM, 50 GIG disk, ATI TV Wonder Rage 128, DEC Tulip Network card, SoundBlaster 128, a DVD/CD Drive and CD Burner. The onboard ATA-RAID controller and onboard soundcard are disabled.

Preparation

I first booted into my old install of Mandrake, loaded the configuration panel (diskdrake) and wrote down all the hard drive partitions. My configuration was simple, as this is a workstation.

/     		hda7	ReiserFS	3 GIG
/home		hda8	ReiserFS	3 GIG (Where I store my user data)
2 swap	partitions
/mnt/win_c	hda4	fat32		2 GIG 
/mnt/fatdata	hda5	fat32		2 GIG

At the command prompt I did a 'cat /proc/interrupts' and noted down the interrupts. I then copied the /etc /tmp and /root directories into /home. This way you can always refer to your old configuration. I store downloads in the /tmp/apps - so I can quickly reinstall some of my favorite apps without re-downloading them. Feeling confident, I proceeded without backing up my data.

 Installation

The installation tries to be slicker than older version. I had problems in the past (8.1) particularly with the disk configuration when mixing JFS, Reiser and EXT2 file systems. First, I tried the upgrade option, but it bombed, telling me I didn't have enough disk space to continue. I wasn't sure if this was caused by the ReiserFS giving back wrong information or that Mandrake needs a lot of free space to do the installation. I rebooted, made sure the First CD was in the drive and started again (Expert Install). This time I selected full install - of everything.

One feature I wish distros would have when you select individual packages is a "sort by size" - so you could easily prune down the size of your install without having to hunt and peck. I chose grub as my bootloader as it is somewhat technically superior to lilo. Then set my security level to standard (msec) and configured my video card with XFree86 4.2 with 3D support. The install prompted me for a root password and my user name (ops... see troubleshooting). I setup CUPS to use my old Brother 720 Laser printer. It tried to configure my networking, but as I didn't have my ADSL settings on hand, I skipped that section. While my daughter crawled all over me, the install reformatted my / drive and installed the files in about 11 minutes (1.9 GIG). The mandrake install is intuitive and leaves Windows XP in the dust.

 Troubleshooting

I booted the fresh install - up came Mandrake with a new pretty splash screen (Aurora) and I was autologged in as my user. You can delete the 'quiet' option from the boot options in the grub or lilo config file to get your messages back. Mandrake had left my /home directory intact - but had overwritten my user directory /home/ant, as I had used the same user name (ARGHH !!#@!!- 1 day of python scripts I wrote gone....). I kicked myself and then went into the control panel to configure the ADSL connection. I noticed the control panel looks much spiffier - but has mostly the same functionality. I spent a 1/2 hour trying to configure the adsl connection using the wizard and then resorted to the command prompt. su'ed to root, ran adsl-setup and then adsl-start without luck. Then I

cd /etc/ppp
>options ...........# emptied my /etc/ppp/options file
updatedb&
locate pppoe.conf
locate pap-secrets

and then copied the old config files to the /etc/ppp/ directory. I also edited the /etc/resolv.conf for dns resolution.

Next, I had to troubleshoot the sound. I had essentially the same problem with mandrake 8.1 with my SoundBlaster 128 (ES1370). The ALSA Sound system doesn't support it properly. I loaded the configuration panel again, went to the services area, and disabled ALSA. Opened up my /etc/modules.conf with vi and noticed it had added bunch of fancy looking stuff. I copied my backup modules.conf from /home/etc/modules.conf, which included the ES1370.

lsmod
modprobe es1370

voila - I had sound.

To fix the known kdm insecurity I edited the /etc/X11/xdm/Xaccess file and commented out:

* CHOOSER BROADCAST #any indirect host can get a chooser
to:
#* CHOOSER BROADCAST #any indirect host can get a chooser

And then restarted kdm.

Observations and tweaking

I threw in a Sesame Street DVD for my daughter to watch - xine worked perfectly. There is also seems to be better integrated support for stuff such as scanners and other peripherals.

I am a heavy mozilla user - and I was a bit disappointed they didn't squeak 0.99 into the final release of Mandrake 8.2. Although Mandrake gives you a default set of bookmarks ( I had lost my old ones) they don't make any effort to do the mime mappings (a.k.a. Helper Applications) - why not include xpdf/ghostview(ps)?

The menu system has more options aimed at easing new users into linux and DiskDrake seems to be improved a lot. Sound configuration is hidden in harddrake, which may confuse new users coming from Windows.

gcc is still at version 2.96 - I guess they are waiting for Redhat to go to 3.0x before upgrading.
They also have not yet included the mosfet theme liquid theme for kde (a little OSX in your linux), which is available at http://kde-look.org - I haven't got it working yet in Mandrake as the directory structure differs.

More Tweaking

I imported my windows fonts, setup verdana anti-aliasing on my desktop without any problems and then proceeded to install:

Finally, I disabled services in the control panel that I don't need (webmin, proftp, linuxconf etc) and configured the integrated Mandrake security level to high (what happened to the firewall?). I also created an encrypted filesystem in DiskDrake - the only hassle is you have to type in your 20 key AES 128 encryption key every time you reboot.

Summary of first Impressions:

Mandrake has done a lot of work cleaning up the user interface and making Linux more intuitive. Moreover, it is supposed to be more stable - the kernel as well as Mandrake's tools ( although I have not experienced that so far). Perhaps I have been a bit harsh because I lost my data directory (my own fault - but of course I internally blame the vendor). Overall, I think mdk 8.2 is the best Mandrake release so far, a candidate for the best linux distribution, and perhaps my favorite desktop operating system.

 Excellent

Good

Could be better

Anthony lives in Toronto, Canada and enjoys teaching his daughter and wife the wonders of zsh ;-)
He runs a small consulting company that advises firms on email security and develops workflow applications.

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